Anzo's TFA FOTK/TLJ Executioner Builds (KB) aka the Terrible Twofer!

**gmrhodes13[Staff]** · January 25, 2018

It's a very handy tool to have for sculpting.

Coming along nicely

**ukswrath[Staff]** · January 25, 2018

Just bought one, Amazon $9. Thanks for the tip AJ

**Anzo[TK]** · January 25, 2018

Glad I'm not alone in my ignorance! :laugh1: A guy in one of the Facebook build groups suggested it. Bless him for it!

**ShadyP[TK]** · January 26, 2018

3 hours ago, ukswrath said:

Just bought one, Amazon $9. Thanks for the tip AJ

would you mind posting a link to that? I can't seem to locate any under $20.

**ukswrath[Staff]** · January 26, 2018

10 minutes ago, ShadyP said:

would you mind posting a link to that? I can't seem to locate any under $20.

PM sent. Don't want to hijack AJ's thread.

**Anzo[TK]** · January 29, 2018

After a far away troop today, I'm back and plugging along with a few more things tonight.

Adhesive:

At the recommendation of others, my principle adhesive will be ABS cement. I found this on Amazon (adding link to OP). I probably got waaaay too much but better than not enough. Never having purchased it before, I wasn't sure how much I would truly need. You'd probably be okay with just a pint for this build. It says "Low VOC" but it is really smelly! With small kids and a pregnant wife in the home, all glueing will take place in the garage with this ventilator.

Fixing Imperfections with Heat Gun

Some of my pieces have some "bubbles" or lips that make good edges more difficult. I decided to attempt some heat gun work on one such flaw on a piece of bicep tonight. My gun has a "High" and "Low" setting so I set it to "Low" hit the area for no more than 7-10 seconds at a time and pressed it against a flat surface to flatten it out a bit.

Before: After:

Biceps Pt 1:

Content with that small fix, I then proceeded to glue one side of the biceps tonight. To do so I glued an interior cover strip to each bicep like so...

After letting that cure for an hour or so (way better turn around time than E6000) I then glued the other half to each side.

There are small gaps near the top and bottom of the seam but that will be filled in and painted over later one so I'm not concerned about them.

Shoulder Bells:

I also worked on the shoulder bells tonight. Following Ruthar's great tutorial, I clamped the inserts so that they stick out from the top edge of the bell about 1/2".

I then traced the outline of the insert with pencil.

Finally, after sanding the insert and the outlined section of the bell, I applied adhesive and clamped it down. I repeated these steps for the other bell.

Executioner Bells:

I then repeated the above steps for the Executioner Bells. They will be chillin' for a while until I get to painting them.

Posterior Prep for Strapping:

I also took the opportunity while things were drying to prepare the posterior piece for future strapping. I measure the length of the notch and split the difference. I then created faux notches to match the Anovos piece at 50 mm distance from that center line. Matching the distances outline in Ukswrath's thread of 3/4" in and 1" up I marked some holes for drilling. I'm not sure if it had to be exactly those distances and such. The key is symmetry and consistency. The little "swoop" up on the top center ridge was how the piece came to me so I just had to deal with it like that.

Edited February 17, 2018 by Anzo

**Anzo[TK]** · January 29, 2018

I've been waiting nearly 3 days to post the above! :laugh1: Boards were glitchy all weekend!

**Anzo[TK]** · February 2, 2018

I have a question about the inner seam on the biceps.

For level 3 cert it says that the seam need to overlap. I’m not necessarily going to lvl 3 but since I’m doing executioner as well I figured I might as well overlap for these pieces since they clearly do on the executioner.

Here’s what I have so far on one bicep.

Thoughts? Would this be okay for both TFA and Executioner?

**gmrhodes13[Staff]** · February 2, 2018

Looks good to me, definitely appears overlapped.

**ukswrath[Staff]** · February 2, 2018

6 hours ago, Anzo said:

I have a question about the inner seam on the biceps.

For level 3 cert it says that the seam need to overlap. I’m not necessarily going to lvl 3 but since I’m doing executioner as well I figured I might as well overlap for these pieces since they clearly do on the executioner.

Here’s what I have so far on one bicep.

Thoughts? Would this be okay for both TFA and Executioner?

Centurion is optional and to be honest I have yet to see any FO produced that doesn't overlap. As Glen mentioned yours look fine.Nice work

**Anzo[TK]** · February 2, 2018

Cool, thanks for the input!

**Anzo[TK]** · February 4, 2018

I've been working on a lot of stuff but much of it is half finished, namely the thighs and forearms, so I'll wait to post about those. Here are a few updates on some more complete things.

Biceps:

I went ahead and closed up the biceps, comfortable with the feedback I received on the overlap.

Left Bicep

Right Bicep

"Wait, wait, wait!" you say. "There is an extra seam there you goober!" And you would be correct. As I was comparing the two biceps, I realized that perhaps I cut off too much plastic on one side and the seam was just a little to far to the side when I put the two halves together. So I cut out a shim of sorts to extend it out, bringing the seam overlap a bit more center.

Here is the entire shim, which I actually ended up trimming a bit anyway. :lol:

The pencil line was where I wanted the seam to be.

The first pic is the completed bicep. Here are the two side by side.

My plan obviously is the fill in the extra seam before I paint the pieces.

Spats Pt 1:

The spats are a bit tricky because they are meant to fit over each other around the ankle, but the pieces, as manufactured, don't fit very well. This was true of the Anovos kit and KB's is similar. So I did some initial assembly and will work on accuracy later.

When you trim the spats, I was sure to leave an extra bit of overhang for the smaller clasp piece to glue onto.

I then glued the clasp piece on that overhang so that the two butt edges sat as close together as possible.

Pt 1 complete.

Ab/Kidney

No photos here because I was so focused on getting it right I just plum forgot! So forgive the word salad. Hopefully this will be helpful to a future builder in some way by outlining my thought process.

Due to some other mishaps I'll detail later, I was super cautious when it came to assembling the Ab and Kidney plates. I just wanted to be quadruply sure I wasn't cutting too much. Upon initial fitting and taping of the two together, there was a lot of overlap of the kidney plate. I forgot to take a photo so you'll just have to take my word for it. (I've been on a heavy exercise regimen the past 4 months and I guess I brought in my waistline more than I thought, but I digress.) My wife helped me to trace some pencil lines of the overlap. On right side it was 30 mm in and on the left it was closer to 60 mm. As I pondered that more I decided that it could NOT be that way due to symmetry issues. I liked the 30 mm line though so I just drew a fit line 30 mm in on the left side too. I then taped up the pieces again and put it on to check fitment. It wasn't quite as snug but still a comfortable fit.

Content with the 30 mm lines, I split the kidney in the back. KB's armor has a distinct indentation on the kidney piece so I just cut and sanded along that line. Wanting to STILL be sure it was a good fit, I taped up the now cut pieces back to the ab plate and put it on again. Fitment was still good! So I shortened the kidney pieces at those marks and began to adhere them to the ab plate.

To do so I measured the distance from the top of the ab to the bottom edge just below the ab boxes on each side. Ended up around 9 inches. I then cut out some 3 x 9" ABS pieces to act as the bridge. I then applied glue and clamped down.

Once that was sufficiently set, I glued the kidney pieces to the bridge pieces, being sure to keep the orientation correct. It is a simple thing but I highly recommend marking "Up", "Front" and "Back" with arrows or words just to keep yourself straight.

I then did one final fitment check, crossing my fingers I didn't screw it up.

Look Ma it fits! I still need to secure the bottom half with a bridge as well as the box end is poking out a bit.

Edited February 4, 2018 by Anzo

**Anzo[TK]** · February 11, 2018

After being sidelined for a few days with a planned surgery, I'm getting back into the swing of things. I've been having to correct a lot of self-inflicted mistakes lately.

Forearms:

KB's forearms come as 4 separate pieces, a front and back and two side rails. When cut and formed correctly, they make a completely enclosed piece. I taped up the forearms to wrap my head around how to put them together.

Upon doing this, I realized that I made a bit of a mistake during initial trimming. I cut off the side rail on one of the side pieces that the front piece would sit on for assembly. I did this on both forearms.

Whoops!

In order to fix this, I found some cut pieces out of the heap of scrap ABS I saved and created some faux rails on the missing sides. Hard to tell from the photo but here they are on both pieces.

After a TON of fitment, measuring and alignment, I used a dremel to sand down all of the excess return edge so that the side rails would line up with with the back piece. At which point I glued the side rails to the back piece.

On the sides that had the mounting rails intact, there are no features in the piece to work around so I used an interior cover strip to hold the pieces together.

The other pieces have indents for the greeblies to be applied later. As such they do not fit securely without some modifications. Using tape, I stuck the two pieces together to where I wanted them to be and drew a line where the indents don't overlap and measured the difference.

I then backed it off a few mm so that there wasn't any open space when glued together. Using lexan scissors I cut out those indents.

I then double checked fitment and glued them together when I saw they were okay.

With everything in place on the sides, I then moved to the front pieces. I guess I forgot to take photos here but referencing the CRL, the front piece sits flush on the mounting rails so that it isn't jutting out from the front too much. As originally cut, my pieces were sitting out too far. So I used a belt sander to sand off about 5 mm of edge, checking fitment along the way until the pieces sat more flush on the mounts. Content with fitment I then applied glue onto the sides that had the mounts intact, let them dry, then glued the other sides with a lot of patience, magnets and clamps to get it to sit flush with the sides. It was a chore and I don't recommend it to anyone.

Point being, be sure not to trim the side pieces of the forearms too much and leave those rails intact! KB just posted on FB today that he is working on a new mold for the forearms so perhaps this will be ancient history for future KB builders but be sure to ask before cutting too much.

The NEXT issue I encountered as a result of my mis-trimming with the forearms is that the upper points of the front piece with the make shift mounting rails jutting out, leaving an unsightly gap. I wracked my brain of the best way to fix this and had a moment of serendipity. Each piece I had to correct was the mirror image of the other. The pieces with the intact rails needed to be trimmed anyway so I took those trimmings and found that they were 90% matches to the opposite piece! So with a bit of glue, some magnets and patience, I fit those trimmings to the opposite side so that the pointy gap was nearly gone!

Here are both pieces with the small corrective shims.

I'm confident that after filling in the seams up top and painting that you won't even be able to notice.

Happy with the work to fix my mistakes, I applied the front "greeblie" after sanding and general clean up to its respective area with E6000 and will let it dry for a few days.

uiplKltl.jpg?2

**gmrhodes13[Staff]** · February 11, 2018

Nice save looking good

**ukswrath[Staff]** · February 12, 2018

Agreed, nice save :jc_doublethumbup:

**Ruthar[TK]** · February 12, 2018

Great work - coming along very nicely!

**TheSwede[TK]** · February 13, 2018

On 2018-01-26 at 12:08 AM, Anzo said:

Glad I'm not alone in my ignorance! A guy in one of the Facebook build groups suggested it. Bless him for it!

Just got one to for my upcoming FO build :salute:

**Anzo[TK]** · February 17, 2018

Lots of parts that were half finished or pending are starting to come together.

Yoke:

I have been putting off the yoke assembly because it just seems a bit daunting. I had to start it at some point so today was as good a day as any. I started by clamping the bridge and the shoulder arches together to see how they fit. It ended up looking something like this.

On KB's armor there are some indents in the center of the bridge that lines up with arches. On other armors those indents are cut out and the convex ends on the arches fit into the openings. I thought about cutting the concave indents out on the bridge but realized that the pieces fit fine anyways so I saved myself the effort. That is an option if you so desire however.

Observing the fitment check was good because it showed me areas on each piece that needed to be trimmed and dremeled down to line up a bit better. Content with that after trimming and a second fitment check, I glued them together.

Next was to attach the back piece to the bridge. I did a fitment check again and marked and sanded away any trouble spots. I then re-clamped to make sure the alignment was okay. Perhaps others will trim better than I did but I could not get the back piece to perfectly align with the bridge/arch piece. If you find yourself in that situation, fear not, it will be filled in later prior to painting.

After clearing away trouble spots (namely some excess return edge on the back piece, I glued them together. Don't forget to sand your glueing surface for better adhesion. Here is my sanded bridge on the Executioner Yoke.

And here they are!

All in all, they were nowhere near as difficult as I made them out to be. The key is having the correct size AND quantity of clamps to hold them all together. I had 1", 2" and 3" clamps to get around the various angles and curves of the pieces.

**gmrhodes13[Staff]** · February 17, 2018

16 minutes ago, Anzo said:

All in all, they were nowhere near as difficult as I made them out to be. The key is having the correct size AND quantity of clamps to hold them all together. I had 1", 2" and 3" clamps to get around the various angles and curves of the pieces.

Can never have enough clamps and magnets with these, the more the better

Nice work

**Anzo[TK]** · February 17, 2018

Thermal Detonator Part 1:

This was perhaps the trickiest part to assemble. It requires a lot of clamps, magnets and patience. It doesn't help that one part of my TD came to me like this for some reason.

This is the bottom half that connects to the 3 ridged rail that hooks on the back. It should not have been cut like this. I didn't realize this until last week when I set out to trim and assemble it even though I received the kit in November. Not willing to wait on a new piece from KB (I didn't even contact him about this) I set out to fix it.

To do so, I took a dremel to the rough edges to smooth it out into as best a half moon as I could. I then traced that shape onto some spare ABS sheets provided with the kit.

Using some cover strips on the inside, I glued the insert to the original piece.

Good as new?

With that out of the way, I set out to glue the two halves together. I glued the bottom seam together first. It seemed to fit best with the outward facing half (the part people see) overlapping the inward half.

That's the easy part. Next comes the hellish portion. I don't have pictures because I only have two hands. I'll refer you to my inspiration builds linked in the OP for pictures on how they did it. As others can attest, there is a TON of torsional force when you try to fit them together and have the side openings resemble anything close to a circle. Otherwise, at least in my case, they were more oval. So it required me to apply the Weld-On, quickly apply whatever clamps and magnets I could as quickly as possible and then physically hold the pieces together to form the circular openings. I did so by glueing and holding one side until it set well enough (about 10 minutes) then glueing and holding the other. Not cool!

I then applied E6000 to the end caps. The left cap sticks out about 1" and the right cap sits flush. The left side turned out better than the right, hence the clamp on the right to make it more circular while the E6000 dries. Results of that still pending.

**Anzo[TK]** · February 17, 2018

KB posted on his FB page the other day that he will now be providing a resin TD and 2 piece forearms in his future kits.

REMEMBER OUR SACRIFICE future builders! :laugh1:

**gmrhodes13[Staff]** · February 17, 2018

10 minutes ago, Anzo said:

KB posted on his FB page the other day that he will now be providing a resin TD and 2 piece forearms in his future kits.

REMEMBER OUR SACRIFICE future builders!

OMG I cursed and swore while putting mine together, who ever designed that should be drawn and quartered

Looking forward to seeing how the resin one turns out

**Anzo[TK]** · February 17, 2018

Drilling Pill Holes:

While the yokes were drying, I passed the time by drilling out the pill holes of the various pieces. They are found on the Biceps, Chest, and Shins.

Following Tony's build, I purchased this Tungsten Carbide Dremel Tip

My experience with that was overall good but I'll share some cautions to take with it.

TREAD LIGHTLY!!!!

It is very sharp, so don't forget the cut resistant gloves. Also, you are working with it in very small spaces. Once I broke through the plastic and worked to widen the hole, I had to be very soft with the edges as I worked it. Otherwise the tip would catch on the plastic and knock the the dremel like a pinball all around the hole, creating nasty gashes. Here are my results so far. I may need to invest in some files to smooth out some of the holes. All in all a pretty handy tool if you have a steady hand. Again, I say proceed with caution though as it could VERY easily ruin a piece.

Update:

I bought a file set at Harbor Freight for $7 today and worked on the Chest holes. BIG improvement with very little effort. Before on top, after on bottom.

Edited February 20, 2018 by Anzo

**Anzo[TK]** · February 18, 2018

Shin Boxes

Time to add some shin boxes to the left shin. When I trimmed the boxes they still had flared outcroppings at the base that I wanted to slim down to create a cleaner look. Belt sander to the rescue.

Before and After

Next step was to create a way to fasten the boxes to the shim. To do this I cut out some ABS strips cut to rest inside the boxes. After some trial and error, I ended up using 8/32 x 1/2" Chicago Screws for box 1 and 8/32 X 1/4" for box 2 (labeled below). Box 1 sat over the interior cover strip and needed an extra bit so the interior screw could reach it. After assuring that they would fit, I drilled 2 holes in each with a 7/32" drill bit, inserted the female ends underneath and glued the apparatus in with E6000 and set aside to dry. Thanks to Ruthar for this method.

After that was done, I set out to create a template to mount them. Referencing the CRL, I did my best to estimate where the top clip greeblie would go and then outlined the boxes to match. I then measured the distance of where the companion screw would go and noted the distance on the shin. In the end my template looked as seen below. I marked the boxes accordingly so as to not confuse them.